TV Readers with long memories will remember that back in 2010, the halcyon days when Dalek and Fear Year were still set in the future, I constructed a viewing list for all of the contemporary episodes of Doctor Who. It was never perfect and ultimately failed because I became very exercised about where Planet of the Dead was supposed to go, something which I still think is the nuWho equivalent of the UNIT dating controversy. Nevertheless, some people apparently found it quite useful for this or that reason.

Well, its 2013, the 50th anniversary of the series and as you will have gathered in the midst of watching my way through all of Doctor Who, hopefully before the special episode is broadcast on 23rd November, usually a whole story a day. Oh yes. I'm half way through The Key To Time season. For quite a while I wondered if I was going to bother with nuWho when it became apparent that of course I should, but what also of the spin-offs? My expectation is that I will if I have the time and with that in mind I decided I needed to put together a watch list for that too which favoured the pre-Moffat intricate contemporary chronology of the show.

And so, armed with AHistory and the TARDIS Datacore, I set about putting together the following. As you can see this wasn't as easy as the original because of the time travel episodes of the mother series, especially in series five, oddly, where the order of the contemporary episodes is all over the place. Narrative sense prevailed with the understanding that a three month shoot backwards or forwards should be treated in the same way as 5 billion years or whatever. Oh and I know the numbering is a bit strange but I think it makes some sense without having to mess about too many decimal points and letter codes.

There are a few other anomalies. I decided to put Children of Earth after The Waters of Mars (flipping the transition order), suggesting that the reason the Doctor's awol is because he's wrapped up in his own issues. Which adds a certain irony to Gwen's speech about the Doctor in episode five. He's not looking down on you. He's nowhere to be seen. There's also the bonkers insanity of mixing Torchwood's s2, SJA's s1 and Doctor Who's 4th in together, which is how AHistory has it, thanks to internal dating and seasons. We'll see how it works when we get around to it.

Also, Torchwood's Miracle Day still doesn't logically fit anywhere but AHistory rather heroically spends about three pages explaining away continuity errors in the show and the vagueness of some of the dates in Doctor Who itself to suggest that it happens between Night Terrors and The God Complex, with the assumption that the Doctor deliberately drops his friends off after the Miracle has ended. Which does mean you have to sit through Miracle Day half way through s6 of Who, but at least you can do so in the knowledge that some half decent episodes are coming up in your future.

SJA 2.2 : The Day of the Clown
SJA 2.3 : Secrets of the Stars
SJA 2.4 : The Mark of the Berserker
SJA 2.5 : The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith
SJA 2.6 : Enemy of the Bane
SJA 2.7 : From Raxacoricofallpatorius With Love

Having done of all this, part of me now misses the period when Doctor Who truly did rule television, the salad days of the late 00s when it had three shows on at the same time, of Christmas 2006 which brought The Runaway Bride, two episodes of Torchwood and the first episode of SJA nearly on concurrent days. Now, we're lucky to get thirteen episodes in a year and thanks to the vagaries of television production, only two episodes have been made in the show's 50th year. Something's got to be wrong if I was wishing there was another series of Torchwood on, hasn't it?

Updated 25/09/2013 In watching all of Who I've been following this viewing order and notices some glitches a plenty thanks to Turn Left. The first is that Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria lose their lives when saving the hospital on the Moon but according the AHistory's placement of SJA's first chunk of episodes (and so this list), they don't meet until way afterwards. The other one is that only Jack, Gwen and Ianto are mentioned as losing their lives / being transported in the Sontaran incident which on this timeline is before Tosh and Owen die. AHistory does nothing with this, still tucking the Sontaran incident in the "Turn Left" universe as above. In production/broadcast order, such things were less of a problem or less noticable, but the internal dating makes it so.

Rationalisation: the Turn Left universe is even more different, the events in a different order. For some reason, Sarah Jane's first bunch of episodes happen earlier -- the Bane jumping in sooner because they see Earth as a softer touch after the Doctor dies etc. Similar Grey turns up earlier because Jack didn't disappear off to the future with the Doctor and there's no Saxon/Master to contend with. To an extent, Turn Left is a bit of a product of shared universe syndrome and that's the other thing which shows itself throughout all of this. Throughout all the major global incidents inflicted on the planet during SJA, part of my brain is wondering what Torchwood has to say about it. Do they have some way of knowing that someone else is dealing with it? Or is their invisible hand helping them out?

Updated 06/10/2013 In terms of watching them in this order, despite all the Turn Left business, it holds up pretty well, especially for the gap year. Post Journey's End, the Doctor travelling alone not wanting to have attachments means The Next Doctor, Dreamland and Planet of the Dead flow well into one another, then the six radio episodes of Torchwood acting as a neat prelude to Children of Earth, interrupted briefly by Waters of Mars to explain why the Doctor's not available to help them out, he's trying to avoid everything. Compressing the season and a half of SJA in afterwards is strange because of the shared Earth problem, but not as badly as you might expect considering most of them were broadcast long before the preceding episodes and although The Wedding of Sarah Jane does look initially like it should put before The Waters of Mars somehow because the Doctor seems more in character, his final look in the TARDIS when he doesn't look like he knows if he will see Sarah Jane again, plus the foreshadowing from the Trickster about The Gate in The End of Time means its actually in just the right place, the Doctor's bravado throughout masking the pain of the mistake he made in The Waters of Mars and the expectation of his inevitable downfall, assuming you can attribute any kind of pop psychological profiling to a space time event with a personality and mythologically fictional one at that.

Updated 10/03/2014 Finally. I completely forgot. Added in the bottom end of Matt Smith's era with the contentious inclusion of The Time of the Doctor which I've bunged in as the prequel to The Day of the Doctor and Rose right at the top because if this is supposed to follow a strict chronology and continuity, the viewer must watch the 50th anniversary three times for each of the different Doctors at different points in their timeline, though I wouldn't recommend it to newbies which is why I've put them italics. Though it'd be interesting to wonder what someone who'd never seen any of these episodes before would make of them having watched The Day of the Doctor first. I think this is everything now.

Updated 25/08/2014 Not finally then. Not everything then. Might as well keep adding to this as new episodes appear or as is the case now seasons since all of the titles have been splattered about the place. I'm working from the premise that there can't be much in the way of spoilers here if they've done this. Teases perhaps. Given the popularity of this post (and it's by far the most clicked on in the blog's history apart from the one about the coffee (long story) I was thinking about expanding it to include the classic series, but to be honest apart from trying to decide where to put K9 and Company, it's all one unbroken run from 1963 to 1989 and this pretty much does the trick with this covering the McGann era.

Update 14/04/2016 Hello again. There's a quite big update in the middle of the list. A commenter pointed out that in SJA's Death of the Doctor he says he's dropped Amy and Rory off at a Honeymoon planet, something he said he intended to do at the end of A Christmas Carol which I've had afterwards for all these years. But looking at the transcripts, this is correct, so I've put A Christmas Carol before SJA s4 now rather than after. Going forward, Capaldi episodes are being added as per. We'll have to see what happens with Class.

Update 28/05/2016 Someone emailed to say that they're watching their way through Who/Torchwood/SJA for the first time in this order and said they were confused by a Matt Smith story turning up in the middle of the Tenth Doctor era. I bunged The Day of the Doctor in there for strict continuity reasons but it occurs to me that it'd be horrendously damaging to watch it in that placement first time around. So I've added a note as such in the list.

Throughout all the major global incidents inflicted on the planet during SJA, part of my brain is wondering what Torchwood has to say about it. Do they have some way of knowing that someone else is dealing with it? IN dr who s4 e13 jack says to sarah jane nice job with the slitheen which i am assuiming is talking about the spin off. so it seems they are aware of her and just leeting her deal with it.

That vexes me when reviewing episodes. It's shared universe syndrome. Why doesn't Superman turn up for every potentially life threatening event in Supergirl? We just sort of have to expect that they're off dealing with something else. Where's the Doctor during Children of Men or Miracle Day? Why doesn't anyone phone him? You just have to shrug and go with it.

Am I to assume that the SJA episodes that arent on this list can/should be skipped entirely? Or am I just supposed to fill in the gaps with the rest of the seasons beyond whatever switches are explicity stated?

I ask because every single season of SJA only includes the first half of the season. I don't mind the idea of being able to cut the amount of episodes I need to watch in half, but I dont want to skip them all and then find out I was supposed to finish each season and Im missing stuff...

Apologies. The version my friend gave me had them split into shorter episodes, so I was looking for 10 episodes not realizing it was actually 5 stories. Now it all makes alot more sense. Thanks so much for this!

The odd thing about most of nuWho is how it apes early 60s Who by giving everything individual episode titles. But SJA is deliberately homaging 70s and 80s Who by having one title across episodes with parts 1 & 2.

DW 7.14.1 at the top it says night of the doctor but on list its listed as something else should i watch it in the gap between 7.14 and 7.14.1 unless its a misprint sorry i have only watch DW in fragmented pieces

I'd say if you're watching it all the way through for the first time that you should watch it after 7.14 - it will make more narrative sense as a flashback piece rather than as a prequel to the whole list. That's why I put it at the top in italics.